CHRISTINE EVANS

CHANCE, FOUND OBJECTS AND UMBRELLAS
Creating A New Play From What's All Around Us
June 12 – 15
Full Details Here

class information

Class Dates:*
Thurs, 6/12 6:30pm - 10:00pm
Fri, 6/13 6:30pm - 10:00pm
Sat, 6/14 11:00pm - 3:00pm
Sun, 6/15 11:00pm - 3:00pm
*15 Hours Total Class Time

Class Price:

Class Description:
Where do ideas come from? How do you find the seeds of an inspiring idea? In this workshop, you don’t have to “have an idea” to start writing. By noticing and creating from what’s all around us, writers can learn ways to enter the dreaming-field of a new play through the thousand tiny moments, objects and gestures that make up the everyday.

This is an intensive writing workshop that challenges students to find their new play through a process drawn from close attention to “found objects”, chance, and the poetry of everyday things. Participants will work (in guided exercises) from humble, everyday materials close to hand.

We’ll start on the outside, working with pictures, “found” dialogue, gestures, objects, chance encounters. Based on the principle that our attention acts as a magnet to organize material into meaningful patterns, we’ll work from external to more internal “found objects”:—memories, dreams, emotions, scenarios. We will use techniques drawn from early 20th century art practices and concepts, including Tadeusz Kantor’s “poor object” and “reality of the lowest rank”.

By the end of the workshop, students will have the outline of a new work-in-progress and have learned some inventive new ways to continue developing it.

Christine Evans’ plays have received awards and been widely produced in her native Australia at venues including Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney) and the Adelaide International Festival of the Arts. In the U.S., her work has been seen in New York, Providence, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Atlanta, San Francisco, Santa Rosa and Boston. Selected productions include All Souls’ Day (Boston Theater Marathon, 2008); Weightless (Perishable Theatre, RI 2007); Mothergun (Perishable Theatre; Emergency Theatre Project, NYC, 2007) Slow Falling Bird (Crowded Fire, CA, 2005) and My Vicious Angel (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney.) Awards and honors include a Fulbright Award in Visual and Performing Arts, the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award, the Monash National Playwriting Award (Australia), the Weston Award for Dramatic Writing and Perishable Theatre’s Women’s Playwriting Festival (WPF) award (2000 and 2001). In 2007, Trojan Barbie won the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award; in 2009 it receives its world premiere with the A.R.T. (American Repertory Theater). Christine holds an MFA (Playwriting) and Ph.D. (Theatre & Performance Studies) from Brown University. She is the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Playwriting at Harvard.